So, I am a pretty zoning orientated player that has some mix up abilities as well. However, I want to train up rushing down. The closest experience I have with anything rushdown is my main in ST, Balrog, however, I feel like my rushdown isn’t very rushdown, as I tend to “slow down” alot and hold back down because of my zoning habits. How can I train up something like rushdown on training mode? I get the concept of rushdown but I feel like my rushdown skill isn’t crazy enough.
Learning a proper rushdown isn’t just something you pick up in training mode. A lot of it revolves around having a solid understanding of human psychology and an ability to read game momentum. You press when you have the advantage, learn to spot where your opponent is mostly to commit to risky reverals and crouch techs, and know when to back off to cool down and re-establish positioning.
Another aspect is learning character control. You can’t do a proper rushdown unless you have a firm grasp on how to control your character, knowing all of their setups, block strings, frame traps, safe jumps, ambiguous crossups, all that, along with all your best tools to keep yourself in a good position .
Balrog in ST has a very good rushdown because of his ability to do great close up pressure, powerful and fast mixups, along with a deadly super. But again, this revolves around knowing how to bait and counter reversals, spotting when your opponent is most likely to go for reversal counters, knowing when to recognize when they’re blocking too much and you should go for a throw.
In order to learn to rush down, you need to have a really good understanding of all your options. Not only what they are, but what they beat (and more importantly, what they lose to). A lot of this involves just going nuts against a decent opponent and seeing what happens.
You can’t practice “rushdown” in training mode any more than you can practice “zoning.” There’s a lot of back and forth that training mode can’t capture. However, you can practice the combos off specific options and you can practice doing mixups in training mode. There is a jump between knowing a cool mixup and being able to apply it in a game, but you can get started on the process in training mode.
Let’s do an example. Doom can do tri jump l as an overhead, square dash j.m as an overhead, empty tri jump cr.l as a low, box jump crossup s footdive, or empty air dash throw. You can and should practice all of this in training mode.The problem is, if you just go for this without setting it up, you’re gonna get hit by an assist or an air throw or whatever, right? So you have to do pressure stuff as well, like safe foot dives, calling assists, and just being a little patient. Sometimes your opponent will get hit by your pressure and you get a combo anyway, and it’s important that you convert. If you watch Clockwork play Doom, he converts off every damn little hit.
So once you get training mode stuff down, just go nuts and see what happens. If they stop you from doing it, try to find a counter to their counter. On reaction counters are better than predictive. If someone chicken blocks all the time, air throw them.
A good rushdown player will make it feel like you have no options. This takes prediction, confidence, a little luck, and execution.
I have somewhat the same problem. My over all gameplay is very slow. is their anything i can do to speed my self up? will adopting rushdown help and if so how do i start?
Playing faster is all about knowing what they can do to slow you down and stopping them from doing that.
Obviously playing faster is about doing more. This can be rushdown or playing reactive. You don’t have to hit lots of buttons to play fast.